At the beginning of a chess game, White has twenty possible moves and Black has twenty ways to respond – for a total of 400 possible positions after the opening turns. After two moves for each player there are close to two hundred thousand possible chess positions and after five moves the possible number of positions is over a trillion. In fact, there are more possible chess positions than there are atoms in the universe, according to estimates made by mathematicians.

Yet, if a chess grandmaster is given a brief look at a chessboard with 25 pieces arranged as they might be midway through a game, he can place all 25 pieces on a clean board exactly as they were configured during his brief encounter. A novice on average can only place six of the 25 pieces in their original spots.

At first it might appear chess grandmasters have superior memories, but if the 25 pieces are scattered randomly on the board, the chess masters perform no better than a novice, repositioning only six pieces correctly.

Kurt Matzler, Frank Bailom and Todd A. Mooradiun discussed this contradiction in an article published in the MIT Sloan Management Review entitled Intuitive Decision Making. They contend grandmasters see a pattern behind potential configurations of a game. One estimate is a professional player can recognize more than 50,000 configurations, but if the pieces are positioned in a way that doesn’t make sense according to the rules of the game, the chess masters are unable to recognize a pattern and their results are no better than a novice.

The authors define intuitive decision making as the ability to recognize patterns at lightening speed, often unconsciously. This intuition or pattern recognition involves a process where knowledge, experience and emotions are linked.

I mentioned in my last post that while we can’t escape viewing the future through the lense of the present, there are circumstances where we can get insight into what may happen. On the leading edge of the present – the thin line that separates the now from the future – intuition, or pattern recognition, can assist in deciphering current trends. Our intuition can help us develop a better than average assessment of which trends are likely to continue, at least until they get disrupted by some unexpected event.

While intuition is not as good as having a crystal ball to predict the future, it is better than flying blind.

As I mention previously, John Elfreth Watkins Jr.’s predictions of the year 2000 were mostly wrong, but a number of his predictions were surprisingly prescient, particularly in regards to communication. He wrote “persons and things of all kind would be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of mile at a span.” He also mentioned, “Wireless telephones…will span the world.” Perhaps communications was an area where Watkins had more knowledge and experience, allowing him to better recognize patterns that led to his correct predictions.

I’ll explore in an upcoming post how intuition works better in some situations more than others.